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Gleemax.com™ Gives Gamers a Voice, a Gaming Arena and a Place to Interact in Today’s Vast Online Universe

June 11, 2007 (Renton, Wash.) – Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (NYSE: HAS), the leader in trading card, tabletop strategy and role-playing games, today revealed plans to launch Gleemax.com™, a first of its kind online destination for hard core strategy and hobby gamers. Building on its heritage in the hobby gaming space with Magic: The Gathering® and Dungeons & Dragons®, coupled with its success with Magic Online® and its understanding of what strategy, hobby and tabletop gamers want, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) will now provide gamers with a centralized destination online to get everything they want or need.

Gleemax™ will be built on three pillars – community, games and editorial content – each representing the essence of what WotC has been providing strategy gamers for more than 15 years. Specific site features will include an online social community, existing and future releases of WotC digital gaming properties as well as independent strategy games, player profiles, interactive analog and digital community activities, editorial content including community message boards, WotC and player blogs, regularly updated industry news, and game rankings and reviews.

“Wizards has long been the champion of great game play and Gleemax furthers our commitment to this ideal,” said Loren Greenwood, President of WotC. “This moment marks an evolution of our company and to this end, we’ve created an entirely new digital division led by a longtime senior member of our research and development team, Randy Buehler.”

There are several “firsts” for WotC with Gleemax, including the site’s social networking community tool functionality. The tools will run the gamut from traditional social networking fare (blogs, friends lists, etc.) to gamer-specific tools (game reviews, game ratings, ways to search for games and gamers) to specialized content that adds to the enjoyment of specific kinds of gamers (ways to build and arrange warbands for various miniatures games, ways to talk about characters in role-playing games, etc.).

“Deep down in the DNA of our company we know that the way to sell hobby games is to invest in the community of hobby gamers,” said Randy Buehler, Vice President of Digital Games for WotC. “We feel that Gleemax will provide a lasting infrastructure that supports not just our own customers, but the entire strategy gaming culture.”

In addition to the social networking capabilities, as part of today’s Gleemax announcement, WotC also announced several game initiatives coupled with the site’s features. The website will include an indie strategy game portal devoted to digital distribution of PC games that the company believes will be attractive to its community and worthy of the WotC Seal of Approval for fun, strategic games.

WotC also announced a hardcore board game portal, which will give players access to its backlist of Avalon Hill® titles such as Axis & Allies® and the award-winning Vegas Showdown™. These two portals supplement a WotC digital game lineup that already includes Magic Online (which celebrates its 5th birthday later this month) and Uncivilized: The Goblin Game™, previously announced and slated to begin external play testing later this year.

Gleemax will also give core hobby retailers a place to advertise upcoming tournaments and events, which will automatically populate the calendars of players in those areas interested in those games. “This community will have one foot in the digital world and one foot in the analog world,” commented Buehler. “Based on our experience with the communities around our various games, we find this makes for a particularly vibrant online experience.”

And as an extension to the already robust Wizards.com editorial content, Gleemax will include blogs from WotC insiders and a discussion of game-play, which is so often neglected or overlooked by mainstream computer gaming publications. “Our gamer has been slipping through the cracks,” said Buehler. “Right now the tabletop and strategy gamers are scattered across many websites and they can have a hard time finding each other or finding information about good games to play. Gleemax fixes this problem.”

To ensure Gleemax provides players with engaging content and vibrant features most commonly requested and wished for in online communities, WotC is enlisting industry thought leaders in all areas dedicated to online social experiences and strategy/hobby games to sit on a Gleemax Advisory Board. WotC will use the board’s input to not only assist during the development stages of the site, but ongoing to ensure Gleemax is providing everything possible for enthusiasts.

In addition to the Advisory Board’s industry thought leaders, to kick off the launch celebration, WotC is making an Open Casting Call to select three players to sit on the Advisory Board, ensuring the hobby and tabletop gamers and fans are represented on the board. The selection process will be a reality TV style contest run through Gleemax.com over the course of the summer. Bringing player members onto the Advisory Board reinforces WotC’s long-standing tradition of engaging with its consumers to ensure their thoughts, opinions and voices are heard.

“We want to build something that the whole industry can embrace,” said Buehler. “The only way to get this right is to build it in collaboration with our community and this Advisory Board will make sure we do exactly that.

Gleemax.com will launch in various phases, each phase providing additional online community tools for today’s players with the first phase previewing at GenCon in August. Phase one will offer gamers online community tools, gamer personal profiles, and editorial content. Then over the back half of the year and into early 2008, new features will be steadily added and new games will start coming online.

For more information on the Gleemax.com launch and phase launch plan, please visit www.gleemax.com.

So, 'this' is the DI? Seems so from a quick readover of the site. They certainly make it sound exciting. Although, to be perfectly honest, I hope they have optional themes for those of us who don't find the cutsey brain-in-a-jar and green color scheme particularly attractive.

And, I agree. The name gleemax is... less than ideal.

Welcome to Gleemax!

Wizards of the Coast is building nothing less than the Home for Gamers right here on this URL. Gleemax.com will be an online strategy gaming destination built on three important pillars: Community, Content, and, of course, Games. But before I get into the "what," I want to talk a little about the "why."

Wizards has always done the majority of its business through a core network of hobby stores and the communities those stores create. When my friends and I got into gaming, we walked into a hobby store and found a world of awesome games, a guy behind the counter who knew everything about them, and a bunch of people just like us who wanted to play. I've sat at enough gamer-tables at weddings to attest to the fact that those are the friends you hold on to.

But times change. Today, that hobby store and all its wonders is still there, but we see an opportunity to engage more budding gamers and ultimately drive new traffic to those stores. The key to growing the hobby gaming industry and making sure it continues to thrive for years to come is to recruit the next generation of gamers into our culture. And what about gamers who want to play, but don't have the time, or don't know where to find other gamers anymore? How can we make it easy for all these would-be gamers to start -- or return to -- gaming?

The answer, we believe, is Gleemax. It's a massive expansion of our web presence, designed to give gamers a place online where they can hang out, play games, and most importantly, find other gamers. We see this as a natural extension of things that Wizards has stood for since the early 90's and here's how we're going to do it:

Community

We want to give all gamers their own personal pages with tons of features that make it convenient to talk about games, find people to play games with, and get more out of the games they choose to play. We're not just talking about Wizards of the Coast games either. We see this project as an investment in growing the entire strategy gamer culture. There will be features aimed at existing Wizards customers (ways to show off your D&D character, your warband, or your deck, etc.) and there will be plenty of tools that fans of other games can use as well. We also want to give retail stores their own pages where they can promote their store, talk about store events and organized play programs -- events that will then automatically appear on the calendars of local players who care about those games. Our goals are to make sure the tabletop gamer has everything he or she could possibly need from a website and also to turn our attention to the online strategy gamers who want the same sorts of game play but prefer to play on a digital platform.

Content

We already have lots of great content on our website, from articles about our various games to behind-the-scenes peeks. But we can do even better. With Gleemax, we'll be deploying many of those same tactics, except we'll be talking about gaming in general and digital gaming in particular. You can expect a ton of blogs from Wizards insiders and a real dialog between us and our fans (that would be you). And like I said before, this isn't just about our games. It's about all games, so you'll be able to talk about anything you want.

Games

And, of course, we're going to have games. Lots of them. I don't want to give too much away yet, but imagine an Indie Strategy Games Portal filled with the coolest independent games, vetted by us, and given the Wizards Seal-of-Approval for fun, strategic game-play. Then think about a Board Game Portal featuring classics from our Avalon HillTM catalog, as well as new games we don't even know about yet! Plus Magic Online® and our original computer game Uncivilized: The Goblin GameTM (take a peek: www.wizards.com/goblinz). And that's just a start.

We think Gleemax is the right thing to do for Wizards of the Coast, the right thing to do for the tabletop hobby gaming industry, and the right thing to do for a sizable group of digital gamers who are being ignored by the mainstream computer gaming industry. We want to build a home that all three groups can feel comfortable in and I think it will change the face of the hobby gaming industry forever. If we pull this off (and believe me, we intend to), then Gleemax will become the center of the online strategy and roleplaying gaming universe.

Advisory Board

There is one other thing I want to talk to you about. Because we're interested in building something that serves the needs of the entire community and not just Wizards, we want everyone reading this to help us get it right. Gleemax has to be a collaboration between us and our community. To that end, we are developing an Advisory Board.

We will invite thought leaders from both the tabletop and digital gaming industries to serve on this board. The idea is to bring folks together several times a year to tell them about our plans for the future, and ask their advice. We want to know where they think we got it right and what they would do differently.

In addition (this is important), we will reserve multiple seats on the Advisory Board for gamers like yourselves. Because Gleemax is everyone's community, we want to make sure you have the chance to tell us in person precisely what we need to do to make it a place you will want to use. Stay tuned to this site to find out how you can become one of the chosen board members.

So there's the pitch... that's what we're up to. There's more, of course, much more. But that will all come in time. Meanwhile, I'll be posting weekly updates with more detail on each of the aspects of Gleemax.

Coming next week: Open Casting Call. Be sure to tune in to find out how you can prove yourself the most worthy to sit on our Advisory Board in our Ultimate Gamer contest. Don't miss out. I'll see you on the message boards!

So, 'this' is the DI? Seems so from a quick readover of the site. They certainly make it sound exciting. Although, to be perfectly honest, I hope they have optional themes for those of us who don't find the cutsey brain-in-a-jar and green color scheme particularly attractive.

And, I agree. The name gleemax is... less than ideal.

I'd third that feeling. When I first saw the name Gleemax on the boards main menu, I thought it sounded like the name of some space rpg they were starting up...or the name of a new Wizard's based cartoon block on Jet-x!

I'd third that feeling. When I first saw the name Gleemax on the boards main menu, I thought it sounded like the name of some space rpg they were starting up...or the name of a new Wizard's based cartoon block on Jet-x!

Gleemax seems extremely childish. Looking at it and the new Transformer game coming out, I think Hasbro has decided to shoot for the 10 - 15 crowd.

The Gleemax forum is very unappealing. I guess I am just getting too old for WOTC. For their sake, I hope they grab a lot of thier target demographic - I think they going to lose a ton of the 20+ customers.

What ever happened to designing unique games that are fun to play? There is no way WOTC is going to force feed weak product to the masses by way of cheesy websites. This whole DI fiasco seems to be driven by a marketing department with way to much money.

Gleemax seems extremely childish. Looking at it and the new Transformer game coming out, I think Hasbro has decided to shoot for the 10 - 15 crowd.

The Gleemax forum is very unappealing. I guess I am just getting too old for WOTC.

I left this part out of my initial reaction. Partly because I have previously been accused of being very negative in some of my posts. Partly because I wanted to spend some more time mulling things over.

Now having spent a bit more time at the site, I suspect there may be some truth to it. The whole site and concept seems VERY MtGO focused, though the Gamer Radio Zero podcast says differently. Visually the site (in it's current incarnation) seems decidedly juvinile.

I hope that their D&D content has a more mature layout, and has a seperate homepage, so I can see as little of the silly little brain-in-a-jar as I can.

I am...Confused with all of this. I just checked the forums of Gleemax.com and didn´t find anything D&D related at all. Just some people roleplaying, or something.

Gleemax is a Magic the Gathering joke card. We're not supposed to "get it". Not to mention, I'm not a gamer, so I guess that's another level of misunderstanding. I'm a role-player, not a game-player. ;)

Why it is on the D&D main page is a complete mystery.

I don't get this:

wait a minute. Based on the forums, Magic Online has been anything but successful when it comes to implantation.

The one thread that was on this forum was deleted for supposed CoC violations, and I can't find the thread on the Magic: The Gathering forum that explains in detail how Magic Online is a failure.

Magic Online was a success. They provided their customers with a broken product and no support, and they still paid an arm and a leg to get it. Sounds like a success to me.

This is a joke. Just from the look of the Gleemax site, I have no incentive to become involved with it at all. Add in the ridiculous "evil brain trying to control your mind!" stuff, and it's the final nail in the coffin.

Sooo, the DI is something D&D magic combined? Please, can any staffmember deny this? Cancelling Dragon and Dungeon and then put together with the Magic players in some sort of online 'community' doesn't look like an improvement.

Sooo, the DI is something D&D magic combined? Please, can any staffmember deny this? Cancelling Dragon and Dungeon and then put together with the Magic players in some sort of online 'community' doesn't look like an improvement.

I do believe that it has already been stated that, yes, the DI will include, at least, Magic Online.

Please tell me there's a portal somewhere that leads to something a bit less gauche for the D&D crowd. WoTC has all of this amazing branding their sitting on for the D&D component of their DI. It would be utterly without merit to ignore all of that in favor of this gleemax site.

Clearly the site has some appeal, but I think WoTC may have missed the mark in regards to their RPG customers.

I don't really like the look of this. But I'll try to stay objective about it and have a look at it every couple of weeks or so...first impressions are often wrong.

To be honest, I am not certain any of this DI stuff will actually matter to me. Coming from Germany, I'm kinda out of the loop, anyway.
While I have no problems with English content (and actually prefer it), 6 out of 8 players in my group don't give a second look at anything that hasn't been translated.

Hopefully they take the opportunity the next few months are offering them, and build a DI worth having. Real forums and not knockoff phpnuke sites, a more organized articles section... There is a lot of really nice stuff that WotC can do with a digital presence, I hope they don't mess it up.

I have no idea what the above poster is trying to communicate by quoting part of my above post, but I would like to restate my concern, for emphasis. The site looks awful. Please consider implementing a D&D/D20 specific portal on the gleemax site for D&D/D20 related content. Ideally, the portal should link out to pages that make use of the existing branding.

I was there at the dawn of the Third-and-a-Halfth Age of Dungeons & Dragons. I saw action during the Crisis of Infinite Foundations, stood on the ramparts of the Citadel of Mirth, delved deep into the debauchery of the Forum of the Adult, and fought alongside the Infernal Bovine on the fields of the Eberron War. I weathered the Ponystorm. I witnessed as the orcs came for the wizos, and I wept mightily. I saw the realm crack as the Fourth Age came upon us, and I witnessed the eldritch tendrils of the dread Gleemax. Now I watch as the Meta Wars ravage the land as the Fifth Age is dawning. I have walked these Boarderlands for many a long year, and bear many scars in my soul. Yet I remain the White Sorcerer, ever in your service. TWS out.

Simply put, I won't bother even trying it out if that is not changed. I don't care if it can be changed, I simply won't bother. If WotC wants me to use such a website they can make it viewable without me having to damage my vision even more.

Gleemax is a social networking site that will support many things, including the D&D Digital Initiative, as well as Magic the Gathering/Magic Online.

The meat of the D&D content will live someplace accessible from Gleemax, but in it's own area. There will be a lot of interconnectivity between the two, especially with regards to things like personal pages, blogs, etc, including tools that support information on your characters, your current D&D Campaigns, and so on.

For example, think of the forums you're posting on now as an example of something that might come from Gleemax, while the articles and other information you get from our current D&D site would be the area with the D&D specific DI content would live.

Gleemax is a social networking site that will support many things, including the D&D Digital Initiative, as well as Magic the Gathering/Magic Online.

Please use different forum software.

I think the complaints about the forum here have pretty well brought the problems PHPNuke has out to light. It's an okay forum package for dealing with very small communities where posts are more news oriented than conversation oriented, but once you start getting conversations between a hundred people going on in a thread... it really does fall apart.

If you're going to be charging for this DI, make a useful forum. I am more than willing to help tweak ARS (again, freely obtainable from userfriendly.org) into something very use able for WotC. But, should you actually hire a software engineer, which you should, I'm sure they can easily make it work.

Really, you need to check out the comments section of userfriendly.org and see what I'm talking about. Ignore the cartoon, it's a waste of time, but look at the forum layout and the way it flows.

If it helps, I'll do the tweaking on my own time, on my own website, and let you look at it minus the "daily commentary" section (since for WotC's purposes, you don't want day to day commentary being archived at midnight).

And add me to the list of people complaining about the color theme. I honestly did wonder if the website had been hacked or not. Especially with that "bring me pixels" garbage on there. What the heck bore that thing into existence, anyways?

Simply put, I won't bother even trying it out if that is not changed. I don't care if it can be changed, I simply won't bother. If WotC wants me to use such a website they can make it viewable without me having to damage my vision even more.

Yes, it is a bit..erm....well, yeah. Anyway, when the Gleemax site is up and running, you'll be able to log right into your own personal page which will have the information and news you're interested in, as well as the layout and color scheme of your choice.

For example, think of the forums you're posting on now as an example of something that might come from Gleemax, while the articles and other information you get from our current D&D site would be the area with the D&D specific DI content would live.

Yes, but these forums are a set of colours that are readable without exacerbating my already lousy eyesight.

I propose before too much earthling contact is finalised, that you read the excellent earthling briefing by Dr Xargle.

Furthermore, I would like to know (if, as stated, the aim is to get more people into brick & mortar gaming shops) what point there is in using gleemax for people like me who do not have a game shop anywhere within range?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go rant at the wall for a while.

If you think commoners can't do anything, you should meet Joe Wood!
The pen is mightier than the sword - but only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp - Terry Pratchett
Methinks (still) wizards bit off more than they can chew.

Anyway, when the Gleemax site is up and running, you'll be able to log right into your own personal page which will have the information and news you're interested in, as well as the layout and color scheme of your choice.

So no, you won't have to live with the current design.

Well, thank god about not having to live with the current design.

About the "personal page", though. Why?
For example, I'm interested in D&D news and information only. What can this "personal page" offer that the main D&D webpage doesn't? Why would I want to sign up to two webpages for the same stuff I can get from one? Why do I need a personal page at all?

Why would I want to read people's "D&D blogs"? Why are they necessary? I already have my own website and blog software that I pay for and don't use (which is incredibly cheap, cheaper than the DI, I can bet).

Yes, but these forums are a set of colours that are readable without exacerbating my already lousy eyesight.

Well, the Gleemax card itself isn't even has as hideous of a colour scheme as the website. I have no clue why they went that direction.

I think it has to do with "Gleemax taking over the 'net" with a "The Matrix" feel. I believe it's supposed to be funny, or something. I guess it might not appeal so much to anyone over the age of 16. Maybe we'll even get "Leet Speak" in our D&D books.

[sarcasm]I can't wait for that same mindset to join my D&D campaign.[/sarcasm] Nothing against 16 year olds, but I have a lot against those of which that think "Leet Speak" and "Caps Lock" are cruise control to cool.

Yes, it is a bit..erm....well, yeah. Anyway, when the Gleemax site is up and running, you'll be able to log right into your own personal page which will have the information and news you're interested in, as well as the layout and color scheme of your choice.

So no, you won't have to live with the current design.

Well, that's something at least.

I'm sure I'll find something else to complain about shortly, but thanks for that bit. ;)

About the "personal page", though. Why?
For example, I'm interested in D&D news and information only. What can this "personal page" offer that the main D&D webpage doesn't? Why would I want to sign up to two webpages for the same stuff I can get from one? Why do I need a personal page at all?

What if that personal page had a tool that allowed you to put in all the info from your current and retired D&D characters? It could also have information about you, your location, age if you choose, what campaigns you're currently running, etc.

You could personally select which information you wanted to see. Maybe you'd want to see D&D and D20 Modern content. Maybe you're only intersted in seeing articles relating to Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. When it's launched, Gleemax will allow you to choose what information you want to have on the personal home page that you see when you log on.

Why would I want to read people's "D&D blogs"? Why are they necessary? I already have my own website and blog software that I pay for and don't use (which is incredibly cheap, cheaper than the DI, I can bet).

Maybe you'll find some blogs you're interested in reading. Maybe one of them is the blog from your DM who posts a weekly round up for what's happened in your campaign. Perhaps he posts that just for your group to see, or maybe he makes it public and lots of other people can come along and read about the adventures of your gaming group. Maybe you'll find some other blogs about campaigns that you'll become interested enough in to want to read.

As far as cost goes, we expect that most people who use the site will never pay us anything. And that's fine. But there will be some premium content that will be available for those who choose to become premium members.